During the third century C.E., various translators, working independently of one another, rendered portions of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Greek Scriptures into Coptic. That was a language of ancient Egypt, using an alphabet mainly derived from Greek. Ancient manuscripts of the Bible are found in several Coptic dialects, including Sahidic and Bohairic.

The Coptic versions of the Bible were translated from Greek. It seems that most Bible books were available in Coptic by the beginning of the fourth century C.E.

The oldest complete Coptic codices of the Gospels available today date from the 11th or the 12th century C.E., but copies of single Bible books, or portions of them, date back to as early as the fourth and fifth centuries C.E. The value of the Coptic translations, particularly the early ones, is that they were based on Greek texts that predate many existing Greek manuscripts. The Coptic translations may shed light on the ancient texts from which they were translated. For example, some Coptic translations render Joh 1:1 in a way that indicates that Jesus, who is referred to as “a god,” is not the same person as Almighty God.